Nobody In Particular
by Oliver Harpst
Summary: Twenty-eight year old Gabriella Montez had given up on love -- rather, love had given up on her. Until a new boss shows up and throws her entire world upside down...
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Nobody In Particular

**Author**: Oliver Harpst

**Rating**: T, for mild language and sexual references

**Summary**: Twenty-eight year old Gabriella Montez had given up on love -- rather, love had given up on her. Until a new boss shows up and throws her entire world upside down...

**Disclaimer**: I only wish that I owned HSM. I only wish. :sigh:

**Author's Note**: **This story will be updated very slowly**. I'm sorry, but I work over 30 hours a week and I just don't have time to update a chaptered story every day. Please be patient with me, and enjoy the many one-shots I'll throw your way. Thanks!

. .

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Gabriella Maria Montez had given up on love -- rather, love had given up on her. At twenty-eight she was the only of her old friends not yet married and, aside from not participating in matrimonial bliss, Gabriella had not had anything even resembling a boyfriend since Brandon Metcalf in the ninth grade. Their relationship, rocky from the start, had lasted a grand total of two dances at the Winter Ball and three weeks of rumors and speculations. Since then, she had lost her taste in relationships, and the few men she _had_ considered potential and had expressed interest in had never worked out. One had joined a monastery in Tibet after their first date, swearing both vows of celibacy and silence until his death, which came four years later in a freak yak stampede. Another had agreed to a second date only minutes before throwing himself in front of a bus, killing him instantly as well as blocking four lanes of traffic for the next hour and half. And the third, only last week, had stolen her car and left her, freezing and wet in the rain, outside of the bar as he decided he much preferred the company of the cute waiter in the leather pants to hers.

Gabriella was not quite sure whether she was cursed, or if she just had truly atrocious taste in men, but had decided recently -- while standing in the rain watching man number three speed off in _her_ Toyota Camry with the firm-assed, tight-pants waiter sucking on his earlobe -- that she was done with dating. Forever. Not that she was quite _happy_ in this revelation, really, it had just seemed the right thing to do; after all, two-thirds of her track record had died painfully, and the third-third would die as well the second she finally tracked him down. She had steeled herself for a cold and lonely life from here on out, and contented herself by telling herself, over and over again because she had not yet convinced herself, that she could be quite happy alone. It was day number three of her new life, a Monday, and she woke up hating the world.

She rose unhappily, first spending a few minutes beating the pillow-that-was not-a-man and the screaming at the alarm clock-that-was-not-Prince-Charming, and staggered into the shower, realizing half way through her shampooing that she had not reset said alarm clock for daylight saving's time, and that she was running an hour behind. Still lathered and cranky she rushed from the bathroom, flinging on the first clothes that came to hand when she reached into her closet and promising God she would attend church every weekend until she died if only the outfit was both matching and appropriate for work. Then it was slipping into a pair of shoes and out the door, hauling ass for the subway station and wondering if the 7:15 was running just a few minutes late.

The train was running on time, in fact, and pulled away from the station just as she ran onto the platform, waving her arms and screaming like the crazy woman who lived in the alley behind the coffee shop -- the one who told everyone about how she had been abducted by aliens who were secretly Elvis, and then crowned queen of the moon. As she sat to wait the 7:20, Gabriella had her second unhappy realization of the day; the skirt and shirt she had grabbed from her closet did not match, and may have been work appropriate had she perhaps been an intern in the seventies. The skirt was long and billowy, somewhat Bohemian, a relic from college, and still wrinkled from the long time spent shoved in the back of the closet. It was also a strange patchwork of different colors and patterns that clashed with anything, but even more so with the striped Oxford shirt she had managed to pick out. The clock, which she only checked when discovering she had left her watch at home, read that it was 7:23, and that the next train was delayed. "Hell," she muttered viciously. She was going to be late for work.

Not that she minded, really, but it would be nice to not be fired. Gabriella had a glamorous job to go with her glamorous lifestyle; she was the secretary for an independent law firm that, as of today, was under newer and stricter management. The hours were long, the pay was minimal, the respect was nonexistent, and now she was going to be late on the first day with the new boss. "I might as well just sit here on this bench and wait for the day to end," she said to nobody in particular.

"Mind if I sit with you?" Nobody in Particular responded.

Gabriella shrieked in surprise -- the station had been empty just moments before -- and leapt to her feet, prepared to run for the exit if Nobody in Particular turned out to be a mugger or one of Manhattan's creepier inhabitants. Nobody in Particular turned out to be a young man in an expensive suit, maybe about five years younger than herself judging by the lack of crows-feet around his eyes that most businessmen -- he was wearing a suit, after all -- had by the age of thirty. He smiled warmly and sat on the other end of the bench she had just vacated, setting an even more expensive looking briefcase beside him. The brass nametag had the initials "T.A.B." engraved in flowing script, which she took a single second to giggle over.

"The train won't be here for awhile, according to the signs," Nobody began again. "You can sit." She was still startled from the surprise of finding herself not alone, and now of finding herself alone with a man in a New York subway station, and told him as much. He laughed, showing a brilliant white smile that was nearly as expensive as his suit and briefcase, and held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "I promise I'm not a creep."

Gabriella didn't even hear him -- she was too fascinated with his hands. They were delicate and pristine, without a scar or callous to mar the flesh, and even the nails were perfectly manicured and cleaned; his hands were just as expensive as the rest of him, she noticed. "You have the most feminine hands I have ever seen."

"Pardon?" _God, _she thought, _he even sounds expensively surprised._

"Your hands. Your nails... Do you see a manicurist?" When he opened his mouth to reply she ignored him, plowing ahead with the complete disregard for decorum that she had recently discovered, when discovering that she no longer needed to impress any man. "You have nicer nails than most women I've met." He tried to fit a word in for the second time and, for the second time, she ignored his, still babbling on in morbid fascination. "It makes sense, you know. The rest of you is so clean and tidy, why wouldn't you have perfect nails." She sat easily beside him, no longer afraid that he might attack her; if he did, she had the amusing suspicion that she would be able to master him in a fight.

"I thought you were afraid of me."

She couldn't tell if he was angry or just bemused, but she laughed anyway. "I find it hard to be afraid of a gay man with a better French manicure than mine. You'd be too worried about breaking it to hurt me. Oh, look! The train came!" Still chattering happily on, she linked arms with him and escorted him onto the train, now fully prepared for the workday.

Whatever it brought with it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title**: Nobody In Particular

**Author**: Oliver Harpst

**Rating**: T, for mild language and sexual references

**Summary**: Twenty-eight year old Gabriella Montez had given up on love -- rather, love had given up on her. Until a new boss shows up and throws her entire world upside down...

**Disclaimer**: I only wish that I owned HSM. I only wish. :sigh:

**Author's Note**: **This story will be updated very slowly**. I'm sorry, but I work over 30 hours a week and I just don't have time to update a chaptered story every day. Please be patient with me, and enjoy the many one-shots I'll throw your way. Thanks!

. .

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

. .

_Oh, fuck._

"I'm not asking anyone to... be afraid of me. We're a small firm, and I'd like us to be friends. All I ask is that you listen to me, follow my orders... maybe even respect me."

Gabriella sighed, internally beating a large straw-and-cloth dummy of herself in a frenzied distress. Of course, with her luck, Nobody in Particular would be her new boss, the rich, ambitious, upstart young lawyer from Los Angeles. And, of course, she would just have to speak out loud the embarrassing and none-too-polite thoughts niggling in the back of her mind. _Yes indeed_, she thought, already mentally writing up her resume for the job she would attempt after being gloriously fired, _you should have just sat all day in the subway station._ And yet, was that a hint of amusement beneath his words? _Probably the sick enjoyment he's going to get from firing me, the bastard._ She clenched her fists, praying that she would neither scream aloud nor burst into big, blubbering tears -- both embarrassing, when done in public, and likely to appeal to the sadistic fantasies of the lawyers around her. They fed on human suffering, didn't you know.

"Miss Montez?"

She realized only then that he had been speaking to her all along, and before her rationality could kick in, before that voice in her head could scream 'NO, DON'T DO IT!' she felt her mouth open and her voice say, "I'm sorry, were you talking to me?" A snicker of laughter from Taylor, the other secretary -- in fact, Grabriella was not even in the position of secretary. She was a lowly assistant for the lowly secretary -- brought her to her senses. _Well, this is it. I'll be fired for sure. Now I won't get this month's paycheck and be able to buy a new car because the last one was stolen and I won't be able to pay rent and I'll be thrown out on the street and have nowhere to live and become a drug dealer on the corner and push cocaine to children and then I'll be arrested for certain. Or shot. I wish I were shot. This is all the fault of that firm-assed, tight-pants waiter at the restaurant last week!_ "Fuck!" she imagined herself accusing, not yet realizing she had switched from the mental to the verbal (as she had the embarrassing habit of doing in moments of high emotion). "Fuck you **and** your tight ass."

Silence.

She heard an awkward cough from Chad Danforth, one of the lawyers, and a nervous laugh that might have been Taylor punctuate the absolute, oppressive, embarrassed silence that had cannon-balled rather unceremoniously into the conference room. It took a few moments for her to realize the staff meeting had halted, and her roving attention was quickly dragged home with the sinking sensation that all of this was because of her. Her eyes squeaked open into the quiet, frantically locking onto those closest to her -- Chad's. "That was out loud, wasn't it." She already knew the answer.

"Yeah."

Nodding, Gabriella looked determinedly down at her toes -- the manicure she had gotten specially for this last date was begin to chip away. If there was anything more depressing in her world, it was the sight of chipping pink nail polish peeping out from the hole in her most comfortable heels. "I don't suppose anyone else was talking at the time?" She fiddled with the last button on her shirt, picking at an invisible piece of thread until it became a real one to unwravel. "Maybe a low-flying plane passed overhead at the exact moment?"

Chad drew in a breath. "I think Johnson over in Litigation might have missed your outburst... but no, Gabs. Everyone heard you." She and Chad, who only talked as long as they were in the same building for eight-hours-a-day-six-days-a-week, were as close to friends as she had at the firm.

The button with the unwraveling thread was quickly becoming a small hole in her shirt, as deftly clinging fingers grasped imaginary straws hidden within the fabric. "No chance then that a turf war between rival gangs erupted outside? Did someone fart loudly? Anything at all?"

Chad winced, and smiled at her in his soothing, not-even-in-your-dreams sort of way. "No, Gabs... So, umm, I guess I shouldn't ask about Friday's date, then?"

"No," she shrugged. "I guess you could ask. Remember how every guy I ever date either leaves me or dies?"

A few heads turned at this, but Chad only nodded and loosened his tie -- the meeting was probably over after the impromptu verbal ode to the boss's ass, which Chad could neither confirm or deny the veracity of, having never even _thought_ of glancing at another man's anything below the armpit, and he might never see Gabriella again after she was fired (and, given the impressive client base Mr. LA-Law had brought with him, never work in this town again). "Yeah..."

"Remember my car?"

He winced sympathetically. "He crashed your car? Are you okay??"

Gabriella patted his arm lightly, pleased that he cared. "He stole my car." Recounting the boring date from beginning to untimely end (from where he had arrived at her door tapping his foot impatiently and muttering that he _supposed_ he could be seen with her and her last season peep-toe pumps, but only because the reservations were in fifteen minutes and did she _know_ how hard it was to get a reservation at Printemps? to the moment where she came back from the bathroom to find her salad eaten, her keys missing, her date gone, and the words "it's actually not me, it's you" scrawled across her plate with the last of her favorite lipstick), she found herself smiling at the situation. How could she not? "So here I am. I'm not married, my breasts are starting to sag, I'll never give my mother any grandchildren, and I have an amazing talent of turning even boring, unattractive men gay. Oh, and I just got fired."

Chad tsked appropriately, and offered his arm for her. "You know what you need, Gabs?"

"Thirty-two cats and a vibrator?"

"A drink. On me." Firmly tucking her hand into the crook of his elbow, he smiled and gave her a soft kiss on the cheek. "Just don't ever date me, because I'm not into the pole and I like being alive." The elevator dinged in punctuation, leaving behind a law firm oddity of shocked faces and uncomfortable silence.

One desirably expensive mouth was opening and closing slowly, as though words that meant to come out had gotten lost along en route and were currently arguing over a map of the larynx, and at high risk for a rather inexpensive bug to fly into it, so Taylor leaned forward and snapped it shut with a sympathetic smile. "Do meetings here often end like this?" he asked, half a mind to turn tail and run back to LA where there were safe, reliable crazies with guns and other such safe, reliable tortures.

"I'd like to say no," she shooed the remaining stragglers to their respective offices with a wave of her hand, and readjusted her glasses upon the bridge of her nose. "But you get used to it after a time. Welcome to _Simons and Co_, Mr. Bolton."


End file.
